Communist Germany Must Pay Reparations to Jews, W. J. C. Insists

East Germany must, as a matter of “simple justice, ” bear its proportion of Germany’s total liabilities for the material losses suffered by the Jewish victims of Nazism, the European Executive of the World Jewish Congress declared in a resolution adopted yesterday and made public here today.

The resolution rejected the arguments of a recent East German note to West Germany–written by East German Vice-Premier W. Ulbricht–that no part of Germany was under obligation to pay reparations to Israel. The WJC resolution asserted that this refusal to indemnify Jews for losses suffered under the Nazis was an affront and a denial of justice as well as a direct contradiction of a declaration made in 1952 by the East German Minister of Agriculture that there was “no basic objection to discussing Jewish compensation” and suggesting that Israel “should make an application to the East German Government” on this matter.

In conclusion, the WJC resolution expresses its “urgent hope that the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) will now make available to the Jewish people payment of its share of the indemnity due from Germany for material losses inflicted upon the Jews by the Nazi Third Reich. “